Patent Application
20160172197
This invention relates generally to methods and apparatus for low energy, Neutral Beam processing and more specifically to high beam purity methods and systems for deriving an accelerated neutral monomer and/or neutral gas cluster beam from an accelerated gas cluster ion beam. The invention also includes certain new or improved materials and devices made by the materials.
During the past decade, the gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) has become well known and widely used for a variety of surface and subsurface processing applications. Because gas cluster ions typically have a large mass, they tend to travel at relatively low velocities (compared to conventional ions) even when accelerated to substantial energies. These low velocities, combined with the inherently weak binding of the clusters, result in unique surface processing capabilities that lead to reduced surface penetration and reduced surface damage compared to conventional ion beams and diffuse plasmas.
Gas cluster ion beams have been employed to smooth, etch, clean, form deposits on, grow films on, or otherwise modify a wide variety of surfaces including for example, metals, semiconductors, and dielectric materials. In applications involving semiconductor and semiconductor-related materials, GCIBs have been employed to clean, smooth, etch, deposit and/or grow films including oxides and others. GCIBs have also been used to introduce doping and lattice-straining atomic species, materials for amorphizing surface layers, and to improve dopant solubility in semiconductor materials. In many cases such GCIB applications have been able to provide results superior to other technologies that employ conventional ions, ion beams, and plasmas. Semiconductor materials include a wide range of materials that may have their electrical properties manipulated by the introduction of dopant materials, and include (without limitation) silicon, germanium, diamond, silicon carbide, and also compound materials comprising group III-IV elements, and group II-VT elements. Because of the ease of forming GCIBs using argon (Ar) as a source gas and because of the inert properties of argon, many applications have been developed for processing the surfaces of implantable medical devices such as coronary stents, orthopedic prostheses, and other implantable medical devices using argon gas GCIBs. In semiconductor applications, a variety of source gases and source gas mixtures have been employed to form GCIBs containing electrical dopants and lattice-straining species, for reactive etching, physical etching, film deposition, film growth, and other useful processes. A variety of practical systems for introducing GCIB processing to a wide range of surface types are known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,676,989 C1 issued to Kirkpatrick et al. teaches a GCIB processing system having a workpiece holder and manipulator suited for processing tubular or cylindrical workpieces such as vascular stents. In another example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,491,800 B2 issued to Kirkpatrick et al. teaches a GCIB processing system having workpiece holders and manipulators for processing other types of non-planar medical devices, including for example, hip joint prostheses. A further example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,486,478 B1 issued to Libby et al. teaches an automated substrate loading/unloading system suitable for processing semiconductor wafers. U.S. Pat. No. 7,115,511 issued to Hautala, teaches the use of a mechanical scanner for scanning a workpiece relative to an un-scanned GCIB. In still another example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,105,199 B2 issued to Blinn et al. teaches the use of GCIB processing to improve the adhesion of drug coatings on medical devices and to modify the elution or release rate of a drug from the medical devices.
GCIB has been employed in etching and smoothing of crystalline and non-crystalline forms of materials such as diamonds and other gemstones. This has not been entirely successful in that at times the gemstone may undergo undesirable color changes as a result of the GCIB processing. It has not been clear whether this results from some form of surface or sub-surface damage to the gemstone materials, or might be due to the formation of a roughened interface between the etched and/or smoothed surface layer resulting from the GCIB processing and the underlying unmodified bulk of the material, or is perhaps due to damage due to surface electrical charging induced by the cluster ions. Whatever the cause of the negative side effects of the GCIB processing, a processing technique for etching and/or smoothing of natural and synthetic gemstone materials that does not introduce undesired degradation of the appearance and esthetic appeal of the gems is desirable. GCIB processing has been indicated as a possible technique for smoothing and/or planarizing surfaces of optical materials such as lenses, reflecting optical surfaces, optical windows, optical panels for display and touch-screen panels, prismatic devices, transparent substrates for photo-masks and the like, optical waveguides, electro-optical devices, and other optical devices. Materials for optical devices include a wide variety of glasses, quartz, sapphire, diamond, and other hard, transparent materials. Conventional polishing and planarizing including mechanical, chemical-mechanical, and other techniques have not produced adequate surfaces for the most demanding applications. GCIB processing has in many cases been shown to be capable of smoothing and/or planarizing optical surfaces to a degree not obtainable by conventional polishing techniques, but alternative techniques that do not result in a rough interface between the smoothed surface and the underlying bulk material are needed to avoid creation of scattering layers embedded in the optical material.
Although GCIB processing has been employed successfully for many applications, there are new and existing application needs not fully met by GCIB or other state of the art methods and apparatus. In many situations, while a GCIB can produce dramatic atomic-scale smoothing of an initially somewhat rough surface, the ultimate smoothing that can be achieved is often less than the required smoothness, and in other situations GCIB processing can result in roughening moderately smooth surfaces rather than smoothing them further.
Other needs/opportunities also exist as recognized and resolved through embodiments of the present invention. In the field of drug-eluting medical implants, GCIB processing has been successful in treating surfaces of drug coatings on medical implants to bind the coating to a substrate or to modify the rate at which drugs are eluted from the coating following implantation into a patient. However, it has been noted that in some cases where GCIB has been used to process drug coatings (which are often very thin and may comprise very expensive drugs), there may occur a weight loss of the drug coating (indicative of drug loss or removal) as a result of the GCIB processing. For the particular cases where such loss occurs (certain drugs and using certain processing parameters) the occurrence is generally undesirable and having a process with the ability to avoid the weight loss, while still obtaining satisfactory control of the drug elution rate, is preferable.
In semiconductor applications, GCIBs have been employed with varying degrees of success in many surface-processing improvements, however opportunities for improvement exist. In conventional GCIB processing, often the result, though significantly improved over earlier conventional technologies, is still not of the quality that is required by the most demanding applications. For example, in smoothing processes, for many materials the final degree of smoothness practically obtainable using GCIB processing does not always meet requirements. In applications where other materials are introduced into semiconductor materials (sometimes called GCIB infusion) for purposes of doping, lattice-straining, and other applications such as film deposition, film growth, and amorphization, the interface between the infused, grown, amorphized, or deposited material often has a roughness or non-uniformity at the interface between the irradiated layer and the underlying substrate that impairs optimal performance of the GCIB-modified layer.
Ions have long been favored for many processes because their electric charge facilitates their manipulation by electrostatic and magnetic fields. This introduces great flexibility in processing. However, in some applications, the charge that is inherent to any ion (including gas cluster ions in a GCIB) may produce undesirable effects in the processed surfaces. GCIB has a distinct advantage over conventional ion beams in that a gas cluster ion with a single or small multiple charge enables the transport and control of a much larger mass-flow (a cluster may consist of hundreds or thousands of molecules) compared to a conventional ion (a single atom, molecule, or molecular fragment.) Particularly in the case of insulating materials, surfaces processed using ions often suffer from charge-induced damage resulting from abrupt discharge of accumulated charges, or production of damaging electrical field-induced stress in the material (again resulting from accumulated charges.) In many such cases, GCIBs have an advantage due to their relatively low charge per mass, but in some instances may not eliminate the target-charging problem. Furthermore, moderate to high current intensity ion beams may suffer from a significant space charge-induced defocusing of the beam that tends to inhibit transporting a well-focused beam over long distances. Again, due to their lower charge per mass relative to conventional ion beams, GCIBs have an advantage, but they do not fully eliminate the space charge transport problem.
A further instance of need or opportunity arises from the fact that although the use of beams of neutral molecules or atoms provides benefit in some surface processing applications and in space charge-free beam transport, it has not generally been easy and economical to produce intense beams of neutral molecules or atoms except for the case of nozzle jets, where the energies are generally on the order of a few milli-electron-volts per atom or molecule, and thus have limited processing capabilities.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,935,623 of Hughes Electronics Corporation, Knauer has taught a method for forming beams of energetic (1 to 10 eV) charged and/or neutral atoms. Knauer forms a conventional GCIB and directs it at grazing angles against solid surfaces such as silicon plates, which dissociates the cluster ions, resulting in a forward-scattered beam of atoms and conventional ions. This results in an intense but unfocused beam of neutral atoms and ions that may be used for processing, or that following electrostatic separation of the ions may be used for processing as a neutral atom beam. By requiring the scattering of the GCIB off of a solid surface to produce dissociation, a significant problem is introduced by the Knauer techniques. Across a wide range of beam energies, a GCIB produces strong sputtering in surfaces that it strikes. It has been clearly shown (see for example Aoki, T and Matsuo, J, “Molecular dynamics simulations of surface smoothing and sputtering process with glancing-angle gas cluster ion beams,” Nucl. Instr. & Meth. in Phys. Research B 257 (2007), pp. 645-648) that even at grazing angles as employed by Knauer, GCIBs produce considerable sputtering of solids, and thus the forward-scattered neutral beam is contaminated by sputtered ions and neutral atoms and other particles originating in the solid surface used for scattering/dissociation. In a multitude of applications including medical device processing applications and semiconductor processing applications, the presence of such sputtered material contaminating the forward-scattered beam renders it unsuitable for use.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,060,989, Swenson et al. teach the use of a gas pressure cell having gas pressure higher than the beam generation pressure to modify the gas cluster ion energy distribution in a GCIB. The technique lowers the energy of gas cluster ions in a GCIB and modifies some of the surface processing characteristics of such modified GCIBs. Such gas modification of GCIB gas cluster ion energy distribution is helpful, but does not reduce problems caused by charges deposited in the workpiece by the ions in the GCIB and does not solve certain processing problems, as for example, the weight loss of drug coatings during GCIB processing. Although the techniques of Swenson et al. can improve the ultimate surface smoothing characteristics of a GCIB, the result is still less than ideal.
Gas clusters and gas cluster ion sizes are typically characterized by N, the number of atoms or molecules (depending on whether the gas is atomic or molecular and including variants such as ions, monomers, dimmers, trimers, ligands) comprising the individual cluster. Many of the advantages contributed by conventional GCIB processing are believed to derive from the low velocities of ions in the GCIB and from the fact that large, loosely bound clusters disintegrate on collision with a solid surface, causing transient heating and pressure but without excessive penetration, implantation, or damage to the substrate beneath the surface. Effects of such large clusters (having N monomers—as defined below—on the order of a few thousand or more) are generally limited to a few tens of Angstroms. However, it has been shown that smaller clusters (having N on the order of a few hundred to about a thousand) produce more damage to an impacted surface and are capable of producing discrete impact craters in a surface (see for example, Houzumi, H., et al. “Scanning tunneling microscopy observation of graphite surfaces irradiated with size-selected Ar cluster ion beams”, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. V44(8), (2005), p 6252 ff). This crater-forming effect can roughen and remove material from surfaces (etch) in undesirable competition with the surface smoothing effects of the larger clusters. In many other surface processing applications for which GCIB have been found useful, it is believed that the effects of large gas cluster ions and smaller gas cluster ions may compete in counter-productive ways to reduce processing performance. Unfortunately, the readily applied techniques for forming GCIBs all result in generation of beams having a broad distribution of cluster sizes having size, N, ranging from around 100 to as much as several tens of thousands. Often the mean and/or peak of the size distribution lies in the range of from several hundred to a few thousand, with distribution tails gradually diminishing to zero at the size extremes of the distribution. The cluster-ion size distribution and the mean cluster size, NMean, associated with the distribution is dependent on the source gas employed and can be significantly influenced by selection of the parameters of the nozzle used to form the cluster jet, by the pressure drop through the nozzle, and by the nozzle temperature, all according to conventional GCIB formation techniques. Most commercial GCIB processing tools routinely employ magnetic or occasionally electrostatic size separators to remove the smallest ions and clusters (monomers, dimers, trimers, etc. up to around N=10 or more), which are the most damaging. Such filters are often referred to as “monomer filters”, although they typically also remove somewhat larger ions as well as the monomers. Certain electrostatic cluster ion size selectors (as for example the one employed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,935,623, by Knauer) require placing grids of electrical conductors into the beam, which introduces a strong disadvantage due to potential erosion of the grids by the beam, introducing beam contamination while reducing reliability and resulting in the need for additional maintenance to the apparatus. For that reason, monomer and low-mass filters are now typically of the magnetic type (see for examples, U.S. Pat. No. 6,635,883, to Torti et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 6,486,478, to Libby et al.) Aside from the smallest ions (monomers, dimers, etc.), which are effectively removed by magnetic filters, it appears that most GCIBs contain few or no gas cluster ions of sizes below about N=100. It may be that such sizes do not readily form or after forming are not stable. However, clusters in the range from about N=100 to a few hundred seem to be present in the beams of most commercial GCIB processing tools. Values of NMean, in the range of from a few hundred to several thousand are commonly encountered when using conventional techniques. Because, for a given acceleration potential the intermediate size clusters travel much faster than the larger clusters, they are more likely to produce craters, rough interfaces, and other undesirable effects, and probably contribute to less than ideal processing when present in a GCIB.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide apparatus and methods for forming high purity neutral gas cluster beams for workpiece processing.
It is a further object of this invention to provide apparatus and methods to provide high purity gas cluster beams that are substantially free of intermediate size clusters.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for forming high purity, focused, intense beams of neutral atoms or molecules with energies in the range of from about 1 eV to as much as a few thousand eV.
Still another object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for forming beams capable of improved surface smoothing compared to conventional GCIBs.
An object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for forming doped and/or strained films and/or for introducing foreign atomic species into the surfaces of semiconductor or other materials, wherein the processed surface have interfaces to the underlying substrate material that are superior to those formed using conventional GCIB processing.
Another object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for forming amorphous regions at the surface of a semiconductor or other material using a Neutral Beam and wherein the interface to the underlying substrate material is superior to one formed using conventional GCIB processing.
A further object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for etching surfaces with superior final smoothness as compared to conventional GCIB processing.
A still further object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for etching optical surfaces with superior final smoothness as compared to conventional GCIB processing.
Another object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for adhering an optical coating to an optical surface with adhesion superior to that obtained by conventional methods.
Another object of this invention is to provide methods for modifying a surface of an optical device to reduce its susceptibility do degradation due to atmospheric exposure, and to provide optical devices thereby improved.
A further object of this invention is to provide methods for forming a barrier on a surface of a hygroscopic material to reduce the susceptibility of the material to absorption of moisture, and to provide materials thereby improved.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for forming and/or growing films on surfaces of semiconductor and/or other materials, having interfaces to the underlying substrate material that are superior to those formed using conventional GCIB processing.
An additional object of this invention is to provide apparatus and methods for treating electrically insulating materials with Neutral Beams of gas clusters and/or monomers for processing such materials without damage induced by beam transported electrical charges.
A further object of this invention is to provide methods for improving properties of an optical element or a gem by Neutral Beam irradiation of a surface of the optical element.
Another object of this invention is to provide an optical element or gem with improved properties by Neutral Beam technology.
An additional object of this invention is to provide a method of forming a SiC or SiCx layer on a silicon substrate/
The objects set forth above as well as further and other objects and advantages of the present invention are achieved by the various embodiments of the invention described herein below.
One embodiment of the present invention provides a method of treating a surface of a silicon substrate comprising the steps of: providing a reduced pressure chamber; forming a gas cluster ion beam, comprising gas cluster ions comprising carbon atoms, within the reduced pressure chamber; accelerating the gas cluster ions to form an accelerated gas cluster ion beam along a beam path within the reduced pressure chamber; promoting fragmentation and/or dissociation of at least a portion of the accelerated gas cluster ions along the beam path; removing charged particles from the beam path to form an accelerated neutral beam along the beam path in the reduced pressure chamber; holding the silicon substrate in the beam path; treating at least a portion of a surface of the silicon substrate by irradiating it with the accelerated neutral beam; and wherein the promoting and removing steps occur prior to irradiating the surface.
The step of removing may remove essentially all charged particles from the beam path. The neutral beam may be substantially free of intermediate sized clusters. The neutral beam may consist essentially of gas from the gas cluster ion beam. The step of promoting may include raising an acceleration voltage in the step of accelerating or improving ionization efficiency in the forming of the gas cluster ion beam. The step of promoting may include increasing the range of velocities of ions in the accelerated gas cluster ion beam. The step of promoting may include introducing one or more gaseous elements used in forming the gas cluster ion beam into the reduced pressure chamber to increase pressure along the beam path. The step of promoting may include increasing the size of a skimmer aperture used in the step of forming the gas cluster ion beam. The step of promoting may include irradiating the accelerated gas cluster ion beam or the neutral beam with radiant energy. The neutral beam treating at least a portion of a surface of the workpiece may consist substantially of monomers having an energy between 1 eV and several thousand eV. The method may further comprise the step of repositioning the workpiece with a workpiece holder to treat plural portions of the surface. The method may further comprise the step of scanning the workpiece with a workpiece holder to treat extended portions of the surface.
The silicon substrate may comprise any of a crystalline material or an amorphous
The method may further comprise the step of heat treating the irradiated silicon substrate to anneal it or to restore crystallinity to the treated substrate or to move the implanted carbon to lattice substitutional sites in the silicon substrate.
The treating step may modify a surface property of the silicon substrate. The surface property may be modified to be harder, more heat resistant, less damage prone, more refractory, have improved chemical properties, or to have a different lattice constant. The modified surface property may be modified to be better suited to serve as a base for subsequent layer growth or to serve as a substrate for deposition of subsequent material.
Another embodiment of the present invention provides a silicon substrate having a surface layer of SiCx (0.05<X<3) formed by accelerated Neutral Beam irradiation of a silicon substrate.
The present invention provides a high beam purity method and system for deriving from an accelerated gas cluster ion beam an accelerated neutral gas cluster and/or preferably monomer beam that can be employed for a variety of types of surface and shallow subsurface materials processing and which is capable, for many applications, of superior performance compared to conventional GCIB processing. It can provide well-focused, accelerated, intense neutral monomer beams with particles having energies in the range of from about 1 eV to as much as a few thousand eV. In this energy range neutral particles can be beneficial or necessary in many applications, for example when it is desirable to break surface or shallow subsurface bonds to facilitate cleaning, etching, smoothing, deposition, amorphization, or to produce surface chemistry effects. In such cases, energies of from about an eV up to a few thousands of eV per particle can often be useful. This is an energy range in which it has been impractical with simple, relatively inexpensive apparatus to form intense neutral beams. In various embodiments, the accelerated Neutral Beam is employed for a variety of surface and shallow subsurface materials processing and to make enhanced materials and devices by such processing methods.
These accelerated Neutral Beams are generated by first forming a conventional accelerated GCIB, then partly or essentially fully dissociating it by methods and operating conditions that do not introduce impurities into the beam, then separating the remaining charged portions of the beam from the neutral portion, and subsequently using the resulting accelerated Neutral Beam for workpiece processing. Depending on the degree of dissociation of the gas cluster ions, the Neutral Beam produced may be a mixture of neutral gas monomers and gas clusters or may essentially consist entirely or almost entirely of neutral gas monomers. It is preferred that the accelerated Neutral Beam is an essentially fully dissociated neutral monomer beam.
An advantage of the Neutral Beams that may be produced by the methods and apparatus of the embodiments of this invention, is that they may be used to process electrically insulating materials without producing damage to the material due to charging of the surfaces of such materials by beam transported charges as commonly occurs for all ionized beams including GCIB. For example, in semiconductor and other electronic applications, ions often contribute to damaging or destructive charging of thin dielectric films such as oxides, nitrides, etc. The use of Neutral Beams can enable successful beam processing of polymer, dielectric, and/or other electrically insulating or high resistivity materials, coatings, and films in other applications where ion beams may produce unacceptable side effects due to surface charging or other charging effects. Examples include (without limitation) processing of corrosion inhibiting coatings, and irradiation cross-linking and/or polymerization of organic films. In other examples, Neutral Beam induced modifications of polymer or other dielectric materials (e.g. sterilization, smoothing, improving surface biocompatibility, and improving attachment of and/or control of elution rates of drugs) may enable the use of such materials in medical devices for implant and/or other medical/surgical applications. Further examples include Neutral Beam processing of glass, polymer, and ceramic bio-culture labware and/or environmental sampling surfaces where such beams may be used to improve surface characteristics like, for example, roughness, smoothness, hydrophilicity, and biocompatibility.
Since the parent GCIB, from which accelerated Neutral Beams may be formed by the methods and apparatus of embodiments of the invention, comprises ions, it is readily accelerated to desired energy and is readily focused using conventional ion beam techniques. Upon subsequent dissociation and separation of the charged ions from the neutral particles, the Neutral Beam particles tend to retain their focused trajectories and may be transported for extensive distances with good effect.
When neutral gas clusters in a jet are ionized by electron bombardment, they become heated and/or excited. This may result in subsequent evaporation of monomers from the ionized gas cluster, after acceleration, as it travels down the beamline. Additionally, collisions of gas cluster ions with background gas molecules in the ionizer, accelerator and beamline regions, also heat and excite the gas cluster ions and may result in additional subsequent evolution of monomers from the gas cluster ions following acceleration. When these mechanisms for evolution of monomers are induced by electron bombardment and/or collision with background gas molecules (and/or other gas clusters) of the same gas from which the GCIB was formed, no contamination is contributed to the beam by the dissociation processes that results in evolving the monomers.
There are other mechanisms that can be employed for dissociating (or inducing evolution of monomers from) gas cluster ions in a GCIB without introducing contamination into the beam. Some of these mechanisms may also be employed to dissociate neutral gas clusters in a neutral gas cluster beam. One mechanism is laser irradiation of the cluster-ion beam using infra-red or other laser energy. Laser-induced heating of the gas cluster ions in the laser irradiated GCIB results in excitement and/or heating of the gas cluster ions and causes subsequent evolution of monomers from the beam. Another mechanism is passing the beam through a thermally heated tube so that radiant thermal energy photons impact the gas cluster ions in beam. The induced heating of the gas cluster ions by the radiant thermal energy in the tube results in excitement and/or heating of the gas cluster ions and causes subsequent evolution of monomers from the beam. In another mechanism, crossing the gas cluster ion beam by a gas jet of the same gas or mixture as the source gas used in formation of the GCIB (or other non-contaminating gas) results in collisions of monomers of the gas in the gas jet with the gas clusters in the ion beam producing excitement and/or heating of the gas cluster ions in the beam and subsequent evolution of monomers from the excited gas cluster ions. By depending entirely on electron bombardment during initial ionization and/or collisions (with other cluster ions, or with background gas molecules of the same gas(es) as those used to form the GCIB) within the beam and/or laser or thermal radiation and/or crossed jet collisions of non-contaminating gas to produce the GCIB dissociation and/or fragmentation, contamination of the beam by collision with other materials is avoided.
Through the use of such non-contaminating methods of dissociation described above, the GCIB is dissociated or at least partially dissociated without introducing atoms to the dissociation products or residual clusters that are not part of the original source gas atoms. By using a source gas for initial cluster formation that does not contain atoms which would be contaminants for the workpiece to be processed using the residual clusters or dissociation products, contamination of the workpiece is avoided. When argon or other noble gases are employed, the source gas materials are volatile and not chemically reactive, and upon subsequent irradiation of the workpiece using Neutral Beams these volatile non-reactive atoms are fully released from the workpiece. Thus for workpieces that are optical and gem materials including glasses, quartz, sapphire, diamond, and other hard, transparent materials such as lithium triborate (LBO), argon and other noble gases can serve as source gas materials without contributing contamination due to Neutral Beam irradiation. In other cases, other source gases may be employed, provided the source gas atomic constituents do not include atoms that would result in contamination of the workpiece. For example, for some glass workpieces, LBO, and various other optical materials are oxygen containing, and oxygen atoms may not serve as contaminants. In such cases oxygen-containing source gases may be employed without contamination.
As a neutral gas cluster jet from a nozzle travels through an ionizing region where electrons are directed to ionize the clusters, a cluster may remain un-ionized or may acquire a charge state, q, of one or more charges (by ejection of electrons from the cluster by an incident electron). The ionizer operating conditions influence the likelihood that a gas cluster will take on a particular charge state, with more intense ionizer conditions resulting in greater probability that a higher charge state will be achieved. More intense ionizer conditions resulting in higher ionization efficiency may result from higher electron flux and/or higher (within limits) electron energy. Once the gas cluster has been ionized, it is typically extracted from the ionizer, focused into a beam, and accelerated by falling through an electric field. The amount of acceleration of the gas cluster ion is readily controlled by controlling the magnitude of the accelerating electric field. Typical commercial GCIB processing tools generally provide for the gas cluster ions to be accelerated by an electric field having ah adjustable accelerating potential, VAcc, typically of, for example, from about 1 kV to 70 kV (but not limited to that range—VAcc up to 200 kV or even more may be feasible). Thus a singly charged gas cluster ion achieves an energy in the range of from 1 to 70 keV (or more if larger VAcc is used) and a multiply charged (for example, without limitation, charge state, q=3 electronic charges) gas cluster ion achieves an energy in the range of from 3 to 210 keV (or more for higher VAcc). For other gas cluster ion charge states and acceleration potentials, the accelerated energy per cluster is qVAcc eV. From a given ionizer with a given ionization efficiency, gas cluster ions will have a distribution of charge states from zero (not ionized) to a higher number such as for example 6 (or with high ionizer efficiency, even more), and the most probable and mean values of the charge state distribution also increase with increased ionizer efficiency (higher electron flux and/or energy). Higher ionizer efficiency also results in increased numbers of gas cluster ions being formed in the ionizer. In many cases, GCIB processing throughput increases when operating the ionizer at high efficiency results in increased GCIB current. A downside of such operation is that multiple charge states that may occur on intermediate size gas cluster ions can increase crater and/or rough interface formation by those ions, and often such effects may operate counterproductively to the intent of the processing. Thus for many GCIB surface processing recipes, selection of the ionizer operating parameters tends to involve more considerations than just maximizing beam current. In some processes, use of a “pressure cell” (see U.S. Pat. No. 7,060,989, to Swenson et al.) may be employed to permit operating an ionizer at high ionization efficiency while still obtaining acceptable beam processing performance by moderating the beam energy by gas collisions in an elevated pressure “pressure cell.”
When the Neutral Beams are formed in embodiments of the present invention there is no downside to operating the ionizer at high efficiency—in fact such operation is sometimes preferred. When the ionizer is operated at high efficiency, there may be a wide range of charge states in the gas cluster ions produced by the ionizer. This results in a wide range of velocities in the gas cluster ions in the extraction region between the ionizer and the accelerating electrode, and also in the downstream beam. This may result in an enhanced frequency of collisions between and among gas cluster ions in the beam that generally results in a higher degree of fragmentation of the largest gas cluster ions. Such fragmentation may result in a redistribution of the cluster sizes in the beam, skewing it toward the smaller cluster sizes. These cluster fragments retain energy in proportion to their new size (N) and so become less energetic while essentially retaining the accelerated velocity of the initial unfragmented gas cluster ion. The change of energy with retention of velocity following collisions has been experimentally verified (as for example reported in Toyoda, N. et al., “Cluster size dependence on energy and velocity distributions of gas cluster ions after collisions with residual gas,” Nucl. Instr. & Meth. in Phys. Research B 257 (2007), pp 662-665). Fragmentation may also result in redistribution of charges in the cluster fragments. Some uncharged fragments likely result and multi-charged gas cluster ions may fragment into several charged gas cluster ions and perhaps some uncharged fragments. It is understood by the inventors that design of the focusing fields in the ionizer and the extraction region may enhance the focusing of the smaller gas cluster ions and monomer ions to increase the likelihood of collision with larger gas cluster ions in the beam extraction region and in the downstream beam, thus contributing to the dissociation and/or fragmenting of the gas cluster ions.
In an embodiment of the present invention, background gas pressure in the ionizer, acceleration region, and beamline may optionally be arranged to have a higher pressure than is normally utilized for good GCIB transmission. This can result in additional evolution of monomers from gas cluster ions (beyond that resulting from the heating and/or excitement resulting from the initial gas cluster ionization event). Pressure may be arranged so that gas cluster ions have a short enough mean-free-path and a long enough flight path between ionizer and workpiece that they must undergo multiple collisions with background gas molecules.
For a homogeneous gas cluster ion containing N monomers and having a charge state of q and which has been accelerated through an electric field potential drop of VAcc volts, the cluster will have an energy of approximately qVAcc/N1 eV per monomer, where N1 is the number of monomers in the cluster ion at the time of acceleration. Except for the smallest gas cluster ions, a collision of such an ion with a background gas monomer of the same gas as the cluster source gas will result in additional deposition of approximately qVAcc/N1 eV into the gas cluster ion. This energy is relatively small compared to the overall gas cluster ion energy (qVAcc) and generally results in excitation or heating of the cluster and in subsequent evolution of monomers from the cluster. It is believed that such collisions of larger clusters with background gas seldom fragment the cluster but rather heats and/or excites it to result in evolution of monomers by evaporation or similar mechanisms. Regardless of the source of the excitation that results in the evolution of a monomer or monomers from a gas cluster ion, the evolved monomer(s) have approximately the same energy per particle, qVAcc/N1 eV, and retain approximately the same velocity and trajectory as the gas cluster ion from which they have evolved. When such monomer evolutions occur from a gas cluster ion, whether they result from excitation or heating due to the original ionization event, a collision, or radiant heating, the charge has a high probability of remaining with the larger residual gas cluster ion. Thus after a sequence of monomer evolutions, a large gas cluster ion may be reduced to a cloud of co-traveling monomers with perhaps a smaller residual gas cluster ion (or possibly several if fragmentation has also occurred). The co-traveling monomers following the original beam trajectory all have approximately the same velocity as that of the original gas cluster ion and each has energy of approximately qVAcc/N1 eV. For small gas cluster ions, the energy of collision with a background gas monomer is likely to completely and violently dissociate the small gas cluster and it is uncertain whether in such cases the resulting monomers continue to travel with the beam or are ejected from the beam.
To avoid contamination of the beam by collisions with the background gas, it is preferred that the background gas be the same gas as the gas constituting the gas cluster ions. Nozzles for forming gas cluster jets are typically operated with high gas flow on the order of 100-600 sccm. The portion of this flow that does not condense into gas clusters raises the pressure in the source chamber. In addition to the gas transmitted through the skimmer aperture in the form of gas clusters, unclustered source gas from the source chamber can flow through the skimmer aperture to the downstream beamline or beam path chamber(s). Selecting the skimmer aperture diameter to provide an increased flow of unclustered source gas from the source chamber to the beamline is a convenient way to provide the added beamline pressure to induce background gas collisions with the GCIB. Because of the high source gas flow (unclustered gas through the skimmer aperture and gas transported to the target by the beam) atmospheric gases are quickly purged from the beamline. Alternatively, gas may be leaked into the beamline chamber, or as pointed out above, introduced as a jet crossing the GCIB path. In such case, the gas is preferably the same as the source gas (or inert or otherwise non-contaminating). In critical applications a residual gas analyzer can be employed in the beamline to confirm the quality of the background gas, when background gas collisions play a rôle in the evolution of monomers.
Prior to the GCIB reaching the workpiece, the remaining charged particles (gas cluster ions, particularly small and intermediate size gas cluster ions and some charged monomers, but also including any remaining large gas cluster ions) in the beam are separated from the neutral portion of the beam, leaving only a Neutral Beam for processing the workpiece.
In typical operation, the fraction of power in the Neutral Beam relative to that in the full (charged plus neutral) beam delivered at the processing target is in the range of from about 5% to 95%, so by the separation methods and apparatus disclosed herein it is possible to deliver that portion of the kinetic energy of the full accelerated charged beam to the target as a Neutral Beam.
The dissociation of the gas cluster ions and thus the production of high neutral monomer beam energy is facilitated by:
1) Operating at higher acceleration voltages. This increases qVAcc/N for any given cluster size; 2) Operating at high ionizer efficiency. This increases qVAcc/N for any given cluster size by increasing q and increases cluster-ion on cluster-ion collisions in the extraction region due to the differences in charge states between clusters; 3) Operating at a high ionizer, acceleration region, or beamline pressure or operating with a gas jet crossing the beam, or with a longer beam path, all of which increase the probability of background gas collisions for a gas cluster ion of any given size; 4) Operating with laser irradiation or thermal radiant heating of the beam, which directly promote evolution of monomers from the gas cluster ions; and
5) Operating at higher nozzle gas flow, which increases transport of gas, clustered and perhaps unclustered into the GCIB trajectory, which increases collisions resulting in greater evolution of monomers.
For producing background gas collisions, the product of the gas cluster ion beam path length from extraction region to workpiece times the pressure in that region contributes to the degree of dissociation of the gas cluster ions that occurs. For 30 kV acceleration, ionizer parameters that provide a mean gas cluster ion charge state of 1 or greater, and a pressure times beam path length of 6×10−3 torr-cm (0.8 pascal-cm) (at 25 deg C.) provides a Neutral Beam (after separation from the residual charged ions) that is essentially fully dissociated to neutral energetic monomers. It is convenient and customary to characterize the pressure times beam path length as a gas target thickness. 6×10−3 torr-cm (0.8 pascal-cm) corresponds to a gas target thickness of approximately 1.94×1014 gas molecules/cm2. In one exemplary (not for limitation) embodiment the background gas pressure is 6×10−5 torr (8×10−3 pascal) and the beam path length is 100 cm, the acceleration potential is 30 kV, and in this case the Neutral Beam is observed to be essentially fully dissociated into monomers at the end of the beam path. This is without laser or radiant beam heating and without employing a gas jet crossing the beam. The fully dissociated accelerated Neutral Beam condition results from monomer evolution from cluster heating due to the cluster ionization event, collisions with residual gas monomers, and collisions between clusters in the beam.
Using the dissociated Neutral Beam produces improved smoothing results on smoothing a gold film compared to the full beam. In another application, using the dissociated Neutral Beam on a drug surface coating on a medical device, or on drug-polymer-mixture layer on a medical device or on a drug-poly-mixture body of a medical device provides improved drug attachment and modification of a drug elution rate without the drug weight loss that occurs when the full GCIB is used.
Measurement of the Neutral Beam cannot be made by current measurement as is convenient for gas cluster ion beams. A Neutral Beam power sensor is used to facilitate dosimetry when irradiating a workpiece with a Neutral Beam. The Neutral Beam sensor is a thermal sensor that intercepts the beam (or optionally a known sample of the beam). The rate of rise of temperature of the sensor is related to the energy flux resulting from energetic beam irradiation of the sensor. The thermal measurements must be made over a limited range of temperatures of the sensor to avoid errors due to thermal re-radiation of the energy incident on the sensor. For a GCIB process, the beam power (watts) is equal to the beam current (amps) times VAcc, the beam acceleration voltage. When a GCIB irradiates a workpiece for a period of time (seconds), the energy (joules) received by the workpiece is the product of the beam power and the irradiation time. The processing effect of such a beam when it processes an extended area is distributed over the area (for example, cm2). For ion beams, it has been conveniently conventional to specify a processing dose in terms of irradiated ions/cm2, where the ions are either known or assumed to have at the time of acceleration an average charge state, q, and to have been accelerated through a potential difference of, VAcc volts, so that each ion carries an energy of q VAcc eV (an eV is approximately 1.6×10−19 joule). Thus an ion beam dose for an average charge state, q, accelerated by VAcc and specified in ions/cm2 corresponds to a readily calculated energy dose expressible in joules/cm2. For an accelerated Neutral Beam derived from an accelerated GCIB as utilized in embodiments of the present invention, the value of q at the time of acceleration and the value of VAcc is the same for both of the (later-formed and separated) charged and uncharged fractions of the beam. The power in the two (neutral and charged) fractions of the GCIB divides proportional to the mass in each beam fraction. Thus for the accelerated Neutral Beam as employed in embodiments of the invention, when equal areas are irradiated for equal times, the energy dose (joules/cm2) deposited by the Neutral Beam is necessarily less than the energy dose deposited by the full GCIB. By using a thermal sensor to measure the power in the full GCIB, PG, and that in the Neutral Beam, PN, (which is commonly found to be from about 5% to about 95% that of the full GCIB) it is possible to calculate a compensation factor for use in the Neutral Beam processing dosimetry. When PN is equal to a PG, then the compensation factor is, k=1/a. Thus if a workpiece is processed using a Neutral Beam derived from a GCIB, for a time duration is made to be k times greater than the processing duration for the full GCIB (including charged and neutral beam portions) required to achieve a dose of D ions/cm2, then the energy doses deposited in the workpiece by both the Neutral Beam and the full GCIB are the same (though the results may be different due to qualitative differences in the processing effects due to differences of particle sizes in the two beams.) As used herein, a Neutral Beam process dose compensated in this way is sometimes described as having an energy/cm2 equivalence of a dose of D ions/cm2.
Use of a Neutral Beam derived from a gas cluster ion beam in combination with a thermal power sensor for dosimetry in many cases has advantages compared with the use of the full gas cluster ion beam or an intercepted or diverted portion, which inevitably comprises a mixture of gas cluster ions and neutral gas clusters and/or neutral monomers, and which is conventionally measured for dosimetry purposes by using a beam current measurement. Some advantages are as follows:
1) The dosimetry can be more precise with the Neutral Beam using a thermal sensor for dosimetry because the total power of the beam is measured. With a GCIB employing the traditional beam current measurement for dosimetry, only the contribution of the ionized portion of the beam is measured and employed for dosimetry. Minute-to-minute and setup-to-setup changes to operating conditions of the GCIB apparatus may result in variations in the fraction of neutral monomers and neutral clusters in the GCIB. These variations can result in process variations that may be less controlled when the dosimetry is done by beam current measurement.
2) With a Neutral Beam, a wide variety of materials may be processed, including highly insulating materials and other materials that may be damaged by electrical charging effects, without the necessity of providing a source of target neutralizing electrons to prevent workpiece charging due to charge transported to the workpiece by an ionized beam. When employed with conventional GCIB, target neutralization to reduce charging is seldom perfect, and the neutralizing electron source itself often introduces problems such as workpiece heating, contamination from evaporation or sputtering in the electron source, etc. Since a Neutral Beam does not transport charge to the workpiece, such problems are reduced.
3) There is no necessity for an additional device such as a large aperture high strength magnet to separate energetic monomer ions from the Neutral Beam. In the case of conventional GCIB the risk of energetic monomer ions (and other small cluster ions) being transported to the workpiece, where they penetrate producing deep damage, is significant and an expensive magnetic filter is routinely required to separate such particles from the beam. In the case of the Neutral Beam apparatus disclosed herein, the separation of all ions from the beam to produce the Neutral Beam inherently removes all monomer ions.
As used herein, the term “drug” is intended to mean a therapeutic agent or a material that is active in a generally beneficial way, which can be released or eluted locally in the vicinity of an implantable medical device to facilitate implanting (for example, without limitation, by providing lubrication) the device, or to facilitate (for example, without limitation, through biological or biochemical activity) a favorable medical or physiological outcome of the implantation of the device. The meaning of “drug” is intended to include a mixture of a drug with a polymer that is employed for the purpose of binding or providing coherence to the drug, attaching the drug to the medical device, or for forming a barrier layer to control release or elution of the drug. A drug that has been modified by ion beam irradiation to densify, carbonize or partially carbonize, partially denature, cross-link or partially cross-link, or to at least partially polymerize molecules of the drug is intended to be included in the “drug” definition.
As used herein, the term “intermediate size”, when referring to gas cluster size or gas cluster ion size is intended to mean sizes of from N=10 to N=1500.
As used herein, the terms “GCIB”, “gas cluster ion beam” and “gas cluster ion” are intended to encompass not only ionized beams and ions, but also accelerated beams and ions that have had all or a portion of their charge states modified (including neutralized) following their acceleration. The terms “GCIB” and “gas cluster ion beam” are intended to encompass all beams that comprise accelerated gas clusters even though they may also comprise non-clustered particles. As used herein, the term “Neutral Beam” is intended to mean a beam of neutral gas clusters and/or neutral monomers derived from an accelerated gas cluster ion beam and wherein the acceleration results from acceleration of a gas cluster ion beam.
As used herein in referencing a particle in a gas or a particle in a beam, the term “monomer” refers equally to either a single atom or a single molecule. The terms “atom,” “molecule,” and “monomer” may be used interchangeably and all refer to the appropriate monomer that is characteristic of the gas under discussion (either a component of a cluster, a component of a cluster ion, or an atom or molecule). For example, a monatomic gas like argon may be referred to in terms of atoms, molecules, or monomers and each of those terms means a single atom. Likewise, in the case of a diatomic gas like nitrogen, it may be referred to in terms of atoms, molecules, or monomers, each term meaning a diatomic molecule. Furthermore a molecular gas like CO2 or B2H6, may be referred to in terms of atoms, molecules, or monomers, each term meaning a polyatomic molecule. These conventions are used to simplify generic discussions of gases and gas clusters or gas cluster ions independent of whether they are monatomic, diatomic, or molecular in their gaseous form. In referring to a constituent of a molecule or of a solid material, “atom” has its conventional meaning.
For a better understanding of the present invention, together with other and further objects thereof, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Reference is now made to
A workpiece 160, which may (for example) be a medical device, a semiconductor material, an optical element, or other workpiece to be processed by GCIB processing, is held on a workpiece holder 162, that disposes the workpiece in the path of the GCIB 128. The workpiece holder is attached to but electrically insulated from the processing chamber 108 by an electrical insulator 164. Thus, GCIB 128 striking the workpiece 160 and the workpiece holder 162 flows through an electrical lead 168 to a dose processor 170. A beam gate 172 controls transmission of the GCIB 128 along axis 154 to the workpiece 160. The beam gate 172 typically has an open state and a closed state that is controlled by a linkage 174 that may be (for example) electrical, mechanical, or electromechanical. Dose processor 170 controls the open/closed state of the beam gate 172 to manage the GCIB dose received by the workpiece 160 and the workpiece holder 162. In operation, the dose processor 170 opens the beam gate 172 to initiate GCIB irradiation of the workpiece 160. Dose processor 170 typically integrates GCIB electrical current arriving at the workpiece 160 and workpiece holder 162 to calculate an accumulated GCIB irradiation dose. At a predetermined dose, the dose processor 170 closes the beam gate 172, terminating processing when the predetermined dose has been achieved.
In the following description, for simplification of the drawings, item numbers from earlier figures may appear in subsequent figures without discussion. Likewise, items discussed in relation to earlier figures may appear in subsequent figures without item numbers or additional description. In such cases items with like numbers are like items and have the previously described features and functions and illustration of items without item numbers shown in the present figure refer to like items having the same functions as the like items illustrated in earlier numbered figures.
Any workpiece surfaces that are non-planar, for example, spherical or cup-like, rounded, irregular, or other un-flat configuration, may be oriented within a range of angles with respect to the beam incidence to obtain optimal GCIB processing of the workpiece surfaces. The workpiece holder 202 can be fully articulated for orienting all non-planar surfaces to be processed in suitable alignment with the GCIB 128 to provide processing optimization and uniformity. More specifically, when the workpiece 160 being processed is non-planar, the workpiece holder 202 may be rotated in a rotary motion 210 and articulated in articulation motion 212 by an articulation/rotation mechanism 204. The articulation/rotation mechanism 204 may permit 360 degrees of device rotation about longitudinal axis 206 (which is coaxial with the axis 154 of the GCIB 128) and sufficient articulation about an axis 208 perpendicular to axis 206 to maintain the workpiece surface to within a desired range of beam incidence.
Under certain conditions, depending upon the size of the workpiece 160, a scanning system may be desirable to produce uniform irradiation of a large workpiece. Although often not necessary for GCIB processing, two pairs of orthogonally oriented electrostatic scan plates 130 and 132 may be utilized to produce a raster or other scanning pattern over an extended processing area. When such beam scanning is performed, a scan generator 156 provides X-axis scanning signal voltages to the pair of scan plates 132 through lead pair 159 and Y-axis scanning signal voltages to the pair of scan plates 130 through lead pair 158. The scanning signal voltages are commonly triangular waves of different frequencies that cause the GCIB 128 to be converted into a scanned GCIB 148, which scans the entire surface of the workpiece 160. A scanned beam-defining aperture 214 defines a scanned area. The scanned beam-defining aperture 214 is electrically conductive and is electrically connected to the low-pressure vessel 102 wall and supported by support member 220. The workpiece holder 202 is electrically connected via a flexible electrical lead 222 to a faraday cup 216 that surrounds the workpiece 160 and the workpiece holder 202 and collects all the current passing through the defining aperture 214. The workpiece holder 202 is electrically isolated from the articulation/rotation mechanism 204 and the faraday cup 216 is electrically isolated from and mounted to the low-pressure vessel 102 by insulators 218. Accordingly, all current from the scanned GCIB 148, which passes through the scanned beam-defining aperture 214 is collected in the faraday cup 216 and flows through electrical lead 224 to the dose processor 170. In operation, the dose processor 170 opens the beam gate 172 to initiate GCIB irradiation of the workpiece 160. The dose processor 170 typically integrates GCIB electrical current arriving at the workpiece 160 and workpiece holder 202 and faraday cup 216 to calculate an accumulated GCIB irradiation dose per unit area. At a predetermined dose, the dose processor 170 closes the beam gate 172, terminating processing when the predetermined dose has been achieved. During the accumulation of the predetermined dose, the workpiece 160 may be manipulated by the articulation/rotation mechanism 204 to ensure processing of all desired surfaces.
The Neutral Beam 314 contains a repeatable fraction of the initial energy of the accelerated GCIB 128. The remaining ionized portion 316 of the original GCIB 128 has been removed from the Neutral Beam 314 and is collected by the grounded deflection plate 304. The ionized portion 316 that is removed from the Neutral Beam 314 may include monomer ions and gas cluster ions including intermediate size gas cluster ions. Because of the monomer evaporation mechanisms due to cluster heating during the ionization process, intra-beam collisions, background gas collisions, and other causes (all of which result in erosion of clusters) the Neutral Beam substantially consists of neutral monomers, while the separated charged particles are predominately cluster ions. The inventors have confirmed this by suitable measurements that include re-ionizing the Neutral Beam and measuring the charge to mass ratio of the resulting ions. The separated charged beam components largely consist of cluster ions of intermediate size as well as monomer ions and perhaps some large cluster ions. As will be shown below, certain superior process results are obtained by processing workpieces using this Neutral Beam.
To further illustrate the ability of an accelerated Neutral Beam derived from an accelerated GCIB to aid in attachment of a drug to a surface and to provide drug modification in such a way that it results in delayed drug elution, an additional test was performed. Silicon coupons approximately 1 cm by 1 cm (1 cm2) were prepared from highly polished clean semiconductor-quality silicon wafers for use as drug deposition substrates. A solution of the drug Rapamycin (Catalog number R-5000, LC Laboratories, Woburn, Mass. 01801, USA) was formed by dissolving 500 mg of Rapamycin in 20 ml of acetone. A pipette was then used to dispense approximately 5 micro-liter droplets of the drug solution onto each coupon. Following atmospheric evaporation and vacuum drying of the solution, this left approximately 5 mm diameter circular Rapamycin deposits on each of the silicon coupons. Coupons were divided into groups and either left un-irradiated (controls) or irradiated with various conditions of Neutral Beam irradiation. The groups were then placed in individual baths (bath per coupon) of human plasma for 4.5 hours to allow elution of the drug into the plasma. After 4.5 hours, the coupons were removed from the plasma baths, rinsed in deionized water and vacuum dried. Weight measurements were made at the following stages in the process: 1) pre-deposition clean silicon coupon weight; 2) following deposition and drying, weight of coupon plus deposited drug; 3) post-irradiation weight; and 4) post plasma-elution and vacuum drying weight. Thus for each coupon the following information is available: 1) initial weight of the deposited drug load on each coupon; 2) the weight of drug lost during irradiation of each coupon; and 3) the weight of drug lost during plasma elution for each coupon. For each irradiated coupon it was confirmed that drug loss during irradiation was negligible. Drug loss during elution in human plasma is shown in Table 1. The groups were as follows: Control Group—no irradiation was performed; Group 1—irradiated with a Neutral Beam derived from a GCIB accelerated with a VAcc of 30 kV. The Group 1 irradiated beam energy dose was equivalent to that of a 30 kV accelerated, 5×1014 gas cluster ion per cm2 dose (energy equivalence determined by beam thermal energy flux sensor); Group 2—irradiated with a Neutral Beam derived from a GCIB accelerated with a VAcc of 30 kV. The Group 2 irradiated beam energy dose was equivalent to that of a 30 kV accelerated, 1×1014 gas cluster ion per cm2 dose (energy equivalence determined by beam thermal energy flux sensor); and Group 3—irradiated with a Neutral Beam derived from a GCIB accelerated with a VAcc of 25 kV. The Group 3 irradiated beam energy dose was equivalent to that of a 25 kV accelerated, 5×1014 gas cluster ion per cm2 dose (energy equivalence determined by beam thermal energy flux sensor).
Table 1 shows that for every case of Neutral Beam irradiation (Groups 1 through 3), the drug lost during a 4.5-hour elution into human plasma was much lower than for the un-irradiated Control Group. This indicates that the Neutral Beam irradiation results in better drug adhesion and/or reduced elution rate as compared to the un-irradiated drug. The p values (heterogeneous unpaired T-test) indicate that for each of the Neutral Beam irradiated Groups 1 through 3, relative to the Control Group, the difference in the drug retention following elution in human plasma was statistically significant.
The results of processing shown in
Processing such a surface using an essentially fully dissociated Neutral Beam derived from an accelerated GCIB results in considerable smoothing and planarization, and reduces the total peak-to-valley deviation. A conventionally cleaned and polished sample of Corning type 0211 optical glass was irradiated using a Neutral Beam derived from a 30 kV accelerated GCIB (charged components removed from the beam by deflection) formed from an Argon source gas. The irradiated Neutral Beam dose was energetically equivalent (energy equivalence determined by beam thermal energy flux sensor) to a 30 kV accelerated GCIB at an ion dose of 1×1014 gas cluster ions per cm2.
The use of an accelerated Neutral Beam derived from an accelerated GCIB by separation of charged components from uncharged components is shown to be capable of numerous applications in the field of semiconductor processing, with an added benefit that the interface between the layer formed by the irradiation and the underlying semiconductor is extremely smooth and superior to results obtained by conventional GCIB irradiation.
Another optical application that benefits from GCIB or Neutral Beam processing is related to the problem of adhering an optical film onto an optical substrate. Optical devices are commonly improved by coating them with various thin films to enhance or improve performance. Such optical films may be employed as protective coatings, anti-reflection coatings, high reflection coatings, or in combinations to produce dichoric thin film optical filters. The coatings may be thin metal films (for examples aluminum or gold), dielectric films (for examples magnesium fluoride, calcium fluoride, or metal oxides), or may be conductive films to enhance anti-static properties or to serve as electrodes for display or touch sensitive structures. Such thin film coatings are often deposited using physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques or other conventional techniques suitable for the purpose. A common problem is that such films often do not form a strong interface with the substrate or subsequent layers and thus may not be as well adhered as is desirable. A problem arises because the coatings applied by PVD and other conventional techniques often do not form strong bonds to the substrate materials because of their dissimilarity with the substrate materials. GCIB or Neutral Beam processing may be employed to produce thin film coatings on optical substrates (onto optical devices or over other optical coatings) that are much more strongly adhered than coatings applied by the conventional techniques. To achieve a higher adhesion performance, a GCIB or Neutral Beam may be used to convert an initial seed coating to a strongly integrated interface layer with the substrate, and then form the final coating to the desired thickness on the interface layer. Although both GCIB and Neutral Beam may be employed in many circumstances, in the cases where either the substrate or the coating is a dielectric or low conductivity material, the Neutral Beam is preferred because of the aforementioned advantages it has for avoiding damage due to the charge transport inherent in ion beam processing. Both GCIB and Neutral Beam processing achieve an enhanced adhesion of the coating without significant subsurface damage as often occurs with conventional monomer ion beams.
A further application that benefits from GCIB or Neutral Beam processing is related to the problem of atmospheric degradation of materials. For example optical and other devices commonly employ materials that have highly desirable optical characteristics, but which suffer from also having characteristics that make them susceptible to degradation when exposed to ordinary atmospheric conditions. This limits their usefulness or useful service lifetime or useful shelf life when it is not practical to avoid atmospheric exposure. Such materials may degrade due to surface oxidation, absorption of atmospheric moisture, or due to other reaction of the material's surfaces at the atmospheric interface. A specific example is the material, lithium triborate (LBO), LiB3O5, which is a preferred material for many non-linear optics (NLO) applications. In NLO applications, LBO often outperforms other available materials, but suffers from the disadvantage that it is hygroscopic and is degraded by absorption of moisture from the atmosphere or other sources. This limits the effective lifetime of the material in many applications, or even in other applications where limited atmospheric shelf-life causes degradation before the material is placed into service. Additive surface coatings have conventionally been employed reduce the rate of moisture absorption by providing a moisture barrier. However these are not always as effective as may be required, and especially in the case of applications where the optical power density is high (e.g. laser applications), coatings may delaminate or otherwise degrade and loose effectiveness with time. As described hereinabove, the adhesion of such coatings may be improved by employing the GCIB and accelerated Neutral Beam techniques previously disclosed for improving film adhesion. However, GCIB or accelerated Neutral Beam irradiation may also be employed to form a thin barrier that reduces surface reactivity and/or moisture susceptibility. The irradiation-formed barrier may be used in combination with subsequently applied conventional barrier coatings, if desired. Although both GCIB and Neutral Beam may be employed in many circumstances, the material treated is either a dielectric or low conductivity material, the Neutral Beam is preferred because of the aforementioned advantages it has for avoiding damage due to the charge transport inherent in ion beam processing. LBO surfaces deteriorate rapidly when exposed directly to typical ambient atmospheric conditions. Accelerated Neutral Beam irradiation of LBO surfaces significantly delays such deterioration.
A further application that benefits from Neutral Beam processing is related to the formation of a SiC or SiCX (0.05<X<3) layer on a silicon substrate for providing a surface that is harder, that is more heat resistant, that is less damage prone, that is more refractory, that has improved chemical properties, that has different lattice constants, that may serve as a base for subsequent layer growth, that may serve as a substrate for deposition of subsequent material (lattice matching or improved bonding), to serve as a silicon-carbide semiconductor layer on a silicon substrate or to otherwise improve the silicon substrate.
Although embodiments of the invention have been described with respect to a hygroscopic LBO optical material, it is understood by the inventors that it is equally applicable to other hygroscopic crystalline materials as may be employed in optical and other applications. For examples hygroscopic thallium-doped sodium iodide crystals and slightly hygroscopic thallium- or sodium-doped cesium iodide crystals are used in gamma ray scintillation spectroscopy and are subject to degradation due to moisture absorption. Such degradation may be delayed or reduced by irradiation. Although the example described above utilized Neutral Beam irradiation of LBO, it is understood by the inventors that GCIB irradiation may also be applied effectively, though Neutral Beam irradiation is considered preferable in the case of materials having low electrical conductivity. It is also understood by the inventors that prior to irradiation to reduce surface degradation of hygroscopic materials, it may be useful to use a pretreatment of GCIB or Neutral beam to smooth the surface and remove existing surface degradation.
Although embodiments of the invention have been described with respect to silicon semiconductor materials, it is understood by the inventors that it is equally applicable to other semiconductor materials including germanium, and compound semiconductors including, without limitation, group III-V and group II-VI and related materials and it is intended that the scope of the invention is intended to include those materials.
It is understood by the inventors that although embodiments of the invention has been shown for exemplary purposes to be useful for processes such a smoothing, etching, film growth, film deposition, amorphization, and doping by using silicon semiconductor wafers, it is understood by the inventors that the benefits of the invention are not limited only to processes done on bare semiconductor surfaces, but are equally useful for processing portions of electrical circuits, electrical devices, optical elements, integrated circuits, micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS) devices (and portions thereof) and other devices that are commonly constructed using conventional modern technologies on silicon substrates, other semiconductor substrates, and substrates of other materials, and it is intended that the scope of the invention includes such applications.
Although the benefits of applying the Neutral Beam of the invention for electrical charging-free processing have been described with respect to processing various electrically insulating and/or non-electrically-conductive materials such as insulating drug coatings, dielectric films such as oxides and nitrides, insulating corrosion inhibitor coatings, polymers, organic films, glasses, ceramics, it is understood by the inventors that all materials of poor or low electrical conductivity may benefit from using the Neutral Beam disclosed herein as a substitute for processing with charge transferring processing techniques like ion beams, plasmas, etc., and it is intended that the scope of the invention includes such materials. It is further understood by the inventors that Neutral Beam processing is advantageous not only because of its reduced charging characteristics, but also for processing many materials that are electrically conductive, where other advantages of Neutral Beam processing, especially neutral monomer beam processing, which produces less surface damage, better smoothing, and smoother interfaces between processed and underlying unprocessed regions, even in metals and highly conductive materials. It is intended that the scope of the invention includes processing of such materials.
Although the benefits of applying the Neutral Beam disclosed herein for electrical charging-free processing have been described with respect to processing various insulating and/or non-electrically-conductive materials, it is understood by the inventors that the charge-free Neutral Beam processing benefits apply equally to the processing of electrically conductive, semiconductive, or slightly conductive materials that exist in the form of coatings or layers or other forms overlying insulating layers or disposed upon insulating substrates, wherein the at least slightly conductive materials have no reliable ground connection or other pathway for removing surface charges that may be induced by processing using charge transferring processing techniques. In such cases, charging of the at least slightly conductive materials during processing may produce damage to those materials or to the underlying insulating materials. The charging and damage may be avoided by using the Neutral Beam processing of the invention. It is intended by the inventors that the scope of the invention includes processing of such dissimilar material arrangements where an at least slightly conductive material overlays an insulating material.
Although the benefits of applying the Neutral Beam of the invention for smoothing optical materials have been described with respect to processing Corning type 0211 optical glass, an amorphous material it is understood by the inventors that the charge-free Neutral Beam processing benefits apply equally to the processing other optical materials, amorphous or crystalline, including without limit, glasses, quartz, sapphire, diamond, and other hard, transparent optical materials (either employed as optical elements or as gem [natural or synthetic] materials). It is further understood by the inventors that Neutral Beam processing may be used for also applying optical coatings to such materials and for affecting optical characteristics of such materials, such as the refractive index. It is intended by the inventors that the scope of the invention includes processing of such materials for optical and gem applications.
Although the invention has been described with respect to various embodiments, it should be realized this invention is also capable of a wide variety of further and other embodiments within the spirit and scope of the invention.
| Number | Date | Country | |
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| 62117574 | Feb 2015 | US | |
| 61376225 | Aug 2010 | US | |
| 61490675 | May 2011 | US | |
| 61473359 | Apr 2011 | US | |
| 61484421 | May 2011 | US | |
| 61916615 | Dec 2013 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
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| Parent | 13215514 | Aug 2011 | US |
| Child | 14496412 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
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| Parent | 14571533 | Dec 2014 | US |
| Child | 15047553 | US | |
| Parent | 14496412 | Sep 2014 | US |
| Child | 14571533 | US |
